


The Games We Play

by Rynfinity



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 03:49:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3160109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rynfinity/pseuds/Rynfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He <i>h-hit</i> me, m-mama," Loki would blubber, pink lips quivering, and Thor would puff up with righteous indignation.  The whole thing was terribly unfair.</p>
<p>"He hit me <i>first</i>," Thor would insist, which was nearly always true, "and afterwards to boot."</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>In which the traditions we establish as children do not serve us well as adults.</p>
<p>This isn't so much canon divergence as it is canon back-story.  Because of that, it does touch on canon aspects of the original Thor story arc.  I've not tagged it for Major Character you-know-what, because we know from Avengers (and the Thor end-credits scene) that isn't what happens, but if the canon ending to Loki's thread in Thor bothered you...  it's touched on briefly here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Games We Play

It goes back as far as Thor can remember. In the beginning it was a game of sorts; what it is now, he is far less certain.

~

Invariably, from the first time his baby brother pulled himself up to standing (no crawling for Loki, as far as Thor can remember; he just sat there pouting stubbornly until the day he - a little ball of trouble - stormed to his tiny feet; from that point Loki kept right on coming and the universe was never quite the same), things never failed to play out the same way.

There would be an exchange of- of slaps, at first, with pinches and childish pokes. And then another, and another. Thor would writhe and giggle, until Loki managed to launch an attack that actually _hurt_ , and then his own temper would flare. He would dive back into the fray with renewed vigor, slapping harder, poking with real force behind it.

Loki would laugh - all childish giggles himself - and dodge, only to duck underneath one of Thor's clumsy swings and land a good one of his own. And then he would laugh all the harder.

This would go on and on, getting louder and more chaotic with each blow, until they were both flushed and sweaty and covered with welts.

And then Frigga would catch them, probably drawn first by the silence - they weren't out in the palace proper, spooking the staff and toppling the armor - and then, as she neared, by the sounds of flesh striking soft childish flesh. She would practically fly round the last corner into the nursery, with her hair coming out of its do and her skirts clutched high, and drop to her knees beside them. "What is going _on_ ," she would demand-.

-and right on cue Loki would start sobbing. His round green eyes, only moments ago sparkling with glee as he slapped his brother in the face or got a chubby little elbow into Thor's equally chubby childish gut, would fill with big, shining tears.

"He _h-hit_ me, m-mama," Loki would blubber, pink lips quivering, and Thor would puff up with righteous indignation.

"He hit me _first_ ," he would insist, which was nearly always true, "and afterwards to boot."

"You are bigger than he is, Thor, and older," she would admonish, "and crown prince. Your father and I expect you to act accordingly. You must treat your brother better."

Frankly, Thor would usually be reasonably certain he had been treating his brother in exactly the manner Loki deserved. As a young child, he knew no better than to say so.

What would happen next was as predictable as the seasons and as inevitable as the tides. "We have had this conversation countless times, my little man," Frigga would remind him, "and you leave me no choice but to inform your father."

Then it was Thor's turn to cry. It wouldn't ever work, though, not like it did for Loki. Which was both ironic and hideously unfair, because his own tears were _real_. Honest, truthful.

Frigga would scoop Loki up and set him on her hip, his little fists still rubbing his watering eyes. "There, there," she would tell him. "Let's get you to Eir." As she hurried away Loki would steal a look at Thor from around their mother's arm. He would grin, and then stick out his pointy pink tongue.

Thor, doomed to face Odin's wrath (or, worse, the awful weight of the king's _disappointment_ ), could only cry all the harder.

~

As they grew older, sure, the details changed. Still, the basic dynamic held ever firm.

When Loki graduated to the children's training ground, with its wooden practice swords and light staves, he was a year behind his brother in strength and in training but eons ahead of Thor in both dexterity and speed. That, and he was shameless.

"A prince of the court of Asgard does not pull hair like a maiden," their tutor would admonish, again and again. Loki's pointy little chin would come up, jaw set beneath the last of his childish softness.

"I won, didn't I," he would huff. "What difference does it make."

"Warriors don't pull hair," Thor would try as the tutor nodded encouragement. "It isn't done."

"Oh, I suspect it is," Loki would argue, insufferably smug, as Thor rubbed at the bruise on his own cheekbone or wiped the cut above one eye. "And it matters not because I intend to be a sorcerer, not some soldierly dolt."

"He called me names," Thor would complain to his mother over supper.

Loki would shrug his child's shoulders. He was just beginning to grow lean and gangly, not yet broadened into the man he would become. "He hit me," Loki would state, flatly. "I think that deserves a name or two."

"But we were in the _ring_ ," Thor would point out earnestly. "And he pulled my hair!"

That would invariably be the moment Odin chose to join them. “Here I thought I was taking my meal with my queen and the princes of Asgard," he would complain, "and yet it seems I have lost my way and come upon a pair of scullery maids instead."

"He hurt me," Loki would say, looking down as though the admission pained him, and then the crocodile tears would come.

"Darling, wait," Frigga might try to intercede on the days she had borne witness to what had transpired along the way, but the Allfather would hear none of it.

"Go to your room," he would order, glowering at Thor with his one good eye, "and I will deal with you later. _Now_ , Thor."

And Thor would shuffle away sadly as Loki licked the last of their supper from slender fingers.

~

Time only served to accentuate the differences between them. Thor, as strong and golden as the king had once been in his prime, was a shrewd enough strategist. His real strength, though - both literally and figuratively, lay with his might. In the ring he excelled at the bigger weapons; double-edged broadswords that could cleave a man verily in two, axes, even the great war hammers his brother could scarcely lift unaided. In council he was much the same; brash, fast, eager to crush anything in his path and never afraid to leave unspeakable carnage behind him.

Loki, for his part, had indeed gone on to pursue seidr. Despite the endless bullying and teasing such a course of action invariably drew - though Odin himself was a master sorcerer and none would ever dare say a thing to the king's face, the average Aesir viewed magic with grave distrust; a woman's sport, they muttered, not worthy of men - he persisted and triumphed. He was a sight to behold, most likely, but Thor was too caught up in his own exploits to notice.

Still, when they faced off against one another (and it happened with much less regularity as time wore on; by then Thor knew a losing battle when he saw one, and luring him into a fracas took significantly more goading), the same sorry outcome would invariably unfold.

"He struck me with the mace," Loki would tell the healers, thick dark lashes wet with tears. "While I was armed only with a stave. It was hardly a fair fight, Thor," he would point out over top of Thor's protests. "You are twice my size."

Thor would (in secret; to be bested by a mage was nothing short of shameful) nurse the long burn on his palm or the sparking agony inside his skull, wincing as Loki smiled (only behind the healer's back, of course; when she was looking, he had a farcical tale to spin. "It won't happen again," he would vow, sad and chastened (not for the reasons people assumed, of course; rather, because he had lost yet another round to his brother's trickery). “It simply won’t.”

And yet it always did.

~

It wasn't until after his short exile on earth, during which he had finally glimpsed the bottomless hole into which his brother was determined to sink - to drag them both, for that matter - that Thor finally, truly vowed to engage no further. He was done playing this particular game, a child’s game that should have ended years before.

When he stood in the face of his brother's wrath and let Loki-as-the-Destroyer strike him down - stood there willingly, without raising so much as a finger in his own defense - Thor thought the whole thing truly over. _This must stop_ , he had told himself afterwards, once Mjolnir had returned the life force to his shattered body and he had risen to stand anew. _It is no longer a game, and we are no longer children. If we persist in this, one of us will die_.

~

Even so, despite all his good intentions, Thor knew at some level how the whole business was bound to go. He and Loki would fight - dirty and angry, yes, and men now rather than boys - until they were both soundly battered.

And then Loki would yet again find a way to make it all Thor's fault, to save himself from the consequences and Thor from the embarrassment of losing. Because, with the wisdom maturity had brought, Thor now knew: it had been about that all along.

Consequently Loki, dangling dramatically from Gungnir's handgrip - and with all the seidr in the universe at his fingertips as well - will not let go for real. Will not _die_ for real, gone forever beyond any point where Thor can hope to follow.

In their games, no such thing would ever happen.

~

This time, somehow - though Thor still cannot quite make himself believe it, trapped as he is in the endless, inescapable horror of his own pain – he has been proven wrong. Everything he _knew_ could not come to pass? Believe it or not, and he himself is stuck between the two, it has indeed happened.

What, Thor thinks amidst his sorrow, he would not give to have his mother and father punish him now… while his brother laughed behind them.


End file.
